Dating & Relationship status

As of 2019 Skiles was working for American Airlines, piloting Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

In the 2016 drama film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, Skiles is portrayed by Aaron Eckhart and Sullenberger by Tom Hanks.

In March of 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tried to introduce a bill that critics described as an attempt to curb unions from engaging in collective bargaining. Union leaders called for a boycott of the M&I Bank, due to public records showing the bank had made large donations to Walker’s election campaign. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel singled Skiles out as an individual who had made a very large withdrawal from the bank to protest the legislation. The Journal Sentinel reported Skiles was vice president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, which represents 28,000 pilots.

After a formal review of their performance both Sullenberger and Skiles had their flight status restored, but Sullenberger retired in 2010. Sullenberger and Skiles flew together, on March 3, 2010, on a recreation of their original flight plan, on Sullenberger’s last flight as for US Airways. It was their second flight together, as the pair had never worked together before popular flight.

PBS interviewer Charlie Rose interviewed Skiles on February 10, 2009. During that interview Skiles predicted that Sullenberger would receive on-going attention, but that his fifteen minutes of fame would end when he left Rose’s studio. However, he too occasionally was called on to offer advice on crisis management.

Both Skiles parents are pilots, and he became a pilot, himself, when he was just fifteen years of age. He first worked on cargo planes, and then worked for Midway Airlines, but, at the time of the emergency landing, he had been with US Airways for 26 years from 1986 until 2012. Skiles had survived an earlier emergency landing early in his flight career, when he was a flight engineer.

Jeffrey Bruce “Jeff” Skiles (born November 18, 1959) is an American airline pilot for American Airlines. On January 15, 2009, he was the co-pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, when the plane lost all its engines, and he helped captain Chesley Sullenberger land their plane on the Hudson River. Sullenberger was widely celebrated for landing the plane with no loss of life.

Although Skiles was flying as a co-pilot on flight 1549, this was due to a staff reductions at US Airways. He had flown as a Captain, prior to the staff reductions, and had 80 percent as many flight hours as Sullenberger.